For Hamish Linklater, playing Benedick in 'Much Ado About Nothing' Is Like Being an Athlete

For Hamish Linklater, playing Benedick in Shakespeare in the Park's "Much Ado About Nothing" feels less like being an actor and more like being an athlete.

"It feels like suiting up for the Yankees," the tall, dark-haired Mr. Linklater said of pulling on his knee-high leather boots. "It feels like I'm playing for the Shakespeare fans, and you wanna deliver the title for them. You wanna play well for the home team."

The audience, which lines up hours ahead of time for free tickets to the outdoor Delacorte Theater, is markedly different from the typical theater crowd, he said.

"It really feels like you are playing for fans instead of people who shelled out $200 and are sitting back, rightly, and saying, 'Be worth my while.' "

If Mr. Linklater were a Yankee, he'd pretty much be Derek Jeter—a star. He has been cast in Shakespeare in the Park in four of the last six summers, "an unfair amount of casting calls," he said.

With roles in "Merchant of Venice," "Comedy of Errors," and "Twelfth Night," the 38-year-old Mr. Linklater is among the most accomplished Shakespearean actors of his day, especially for someone as young as he is.

"I actually think he may be the actor of his generation, and I'm not kidding," said Jack O'Brien, who directs Mr. Linklater and co-star Lily Rabe in the play. "I've never seen such virtuosity in handling language, and his ability to use the language to support what he wants to do on stage."

It makes sense that Mr. Linklater is comfortable with Shakespeare. His mother, dialect coach Kristin Linklater, co founded the theater troupe Shakespeare and Co. in Lenox, Mass. He began performing in the plays as a child, first appearing in "Much Ado" when he was 9, portraying Benedick's Boy. (He had two lines: "Senor?" and "I am already here, sir!" "I got more notes than anybody else in the play," he says. "I was so bad.")

Mr. Linklater and Ms. Rabe, who are a couple offstage, are both known for making Shakespearean iambic pentameter sound contemporary and accessible.

"People always think we've changed the play or made it 'hipster Shakespeare' or something," he said. "But it's Shakespeare Shakespeare."

For example, it rained during a recent performance and he sat on a chair not realizing that it was wet.

"It's wet," he mouthed to the audience, before popping out of the chair, to laughs.

"He doesn't have to worry about the language," said Mr. O'Brien. "It's like someone who is a master technician of the piano—he doesn't have to worry about scales, which means he can use the full force of personality."

Mr. Linklater and Ms. Rabe also say their lines with American accents, which helps the audience follow the Bard's often-convoluted plots and tongue-twisting monologues.

But Messrs. Linklater and O'Brien are quick to point out the historical accuracy of that quirk: Elizabethans would have sounded more like Americans than Britons today, because the soft "R" associated with an English accent has evolved. It's likely Shakespearean actors would have used a hard "R," like Americans do, they said.

Finally, Mr. Linklater ignores punctuation. Iambic pentameter, he said, is the length of a thought. So instead of looking at the periods and commas, he just speaks thought by thought, not sentence by sentence, which helps him get at both the poetry and the dialogue of Shakespeare's writing.

"If you say one line, and then the next thought, and then the next, and then the thought after that, it keeps breathing and moving forward and you get this blossoming forward momentum of excited, natural, passionate people speaking to one another," he said, and then shook his head, embarrassed at his emotion. "I can't believe I'm talking like this right now."

The biggest challenge of "Much Ado" for Mr. Linklater isn't the many monologues or the scene that calls for him to climb a trellis. It's the wedding scene: He has to listen for a long time without speaking. He has to pretend to listen and react, without listening too hard, and without becoming self-conscious.

"I'm upstage and center," he said, "and I have a sword on and funny facial hair and it's a little much to take yourself seriously."

But that is nothing compared to dealing with the private helicopters on Friday nights and Sunday nights, flying the uber-rich to the Hamptons—and ignoring the city's no fly zone over the theater.

"It doesn't really help your ability to speak verse very much," he said.

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